COCK-FIGHTING.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 31 December 1926, Page 9

COCK-FIGHTING.

schoolboys used to spend many of their holidays attending cock-fights, which were organised by their masters, who received as a reward the dead birds. When we are tempted to feel pessimistic about progress we may fairly encourage ourselves by recalling such vanished amusements (says The Times).-

Cock-fighting was not prohibited by law until well within the lifetime of many still with us, and one does not have to delve any further into the past to find parents expected to contribute to the expenses of the "main” or fight at their children’s schools. The business—one cannot call it a sport—was undeniably fascinating, for it spread in. early times from the East‘ into Greece and Rome, and from Europe into America. Henry VII. ’s Royal pit at Whitehall was one of several scattered over London.

Stakes soared as Mgh as a thousand guineas a match; trainers went to the length of sucking the wounds of their favourites;- wing-trimming and failcutting, shortening the hackle and lowering the comb were reduced to a fine art, and rival breeds—Cheshire Piles, Irish Gilders, Gordons, and Warhorses—were fiercely canvassed. Fond though our ancestors were of cocking, they regarded it as the small beer of amusement; some of their stronger pastimes offered them vastly more promising opportunities of watcMng (bloodshed. After seeing a wild bull loosed with a cat tied to his tail, or fireworks “all over Mm," to be attacked by dogs, or “a large he-tiger" baited, creatures so small as a pair of game birds must have seemed positively tedious. No doubt they made up in skill and deftness for their lack of size. Having lost the tradition of cocking, and being ignorant of its niceties, wo concentrate naturally upon the cruelty that it involved, but no amount of technical charm would justify in modern eyes 'so disgusting a spectacle.